


"it's just a shadow you're seeing that he's chasing"

by SelkieWife



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Drabble, Guilt, Other, PTSD, Past Rape, Past Torture, Shame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-04
Updated: 2017-02-04
Packaged: 2018-09-22 00:46:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9574412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SelkieWife/pseuds/SelkieWife
Summary: A drabble from my @weirwoodsea blog on tumblr. Asha helps Theon through a nightmare and tries not to get lost in her own memories.The characters belong to GRRM's asoiaf series and HBO's Game of Thrones. I don't own them.Title is from Bob Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man





	

_**“ιт'ѕ jυѕт α ѕнαdow yoυ’re ѕeeιɴɢ тнαт нe'ѕ cнαѕιɴɢ”** _

Asha stared out the window at a terrible sea of snow filled trees. At times she felt buried alive in such a stern, cold place. Her feet unsteady with such _STILLNESS_ beneath them. The smell of frost in her nose instead of salt. She wondered if her brother had felt this way when he had been a **hostage** of the wolves for all those years. 

Her mother had raised her to be   ** _B O L D_**   and her father to be his heir. Yet, here she was- warrior turned nursemaid for her grown brother in the cold, stark north. 

She bit her bottom lip, a habit since childhood, and turned back to the bed watching her brother. There had been a lull in his nightmares and his tortured eyes were closed again, his breath ragged, but steady. She had started sharing his bed back in Pyke, before  ** ~~her queensmoot~~  ** the kingsmoot. Arms that were made for hacking through men’s skulls, she wound protectively around him each night and let him thrash and sob against her.

At night he was back in the   ** _D R E A D F O R T_ ,**  back inside crevices of his mind that were almost as painful as the tortures the Bolton Bastard had subjected him to. When she shook him, he would pitifully beg her to take another finger, rave about being “good and loyal _Reek_.” The worst nights were the ones he would ask her to kill him for murdering the **two boys.**  He wanted to die for that. She would bite her bottom lip until she tasted blood and hold him close, lying to him, telling him it would be alright. 

It was so similar to the way her mother had been that she shivered at the memory. They even had the same brittle white hair, the same impossibly luminous staring eyes. Staring at _CORPSES_ that weren’t there, at loved ones lost. Staring, always, right through her.

She leaned into the window and felt the icy glass against her forehead. For a moment she was that young girl again, mourning the loss of her little brother and trying to keep her parents from despair. Before she had become **Asʜᴀ** , captain of   ** _T H E   B L A C K   W I N D_** , reaver and warrior, beating back death with a _laugh_ on her lips. She wondered if she would fail Theonthe way she had failed her parents.

She shoved the thought from her mind. She must always look forward, never back. Looking back had shattered her mother and was ruining Theon.

He was murmuring something again, she turned sharply and took him in. He slept curled in on himself, like a dog. Even unconscious he tried to take up as little space as possible. “ _Robb…. Robb…_ ” his breath became sporadic, rapid, distressed. “ _Robb…._!” 

These were the cruelest dreams. The dreams of the eldest Stark, The Young Wolf. Robb. She knew his name now. She had heard it enough times. Robb Stark. She **hated** him. Hated all the Starks. They had taken her brother and twisted him beyond recognition. 

He began shouting Robb’s name. She crept back into bed and put her arms around him. Theon clung to her, his eyes staring through her. 

“It’s alright… Theon. It’s alright. It was another nightmare. You’re fine.”

Theon turned those searing eyes on her and saw her for the first time. His eyes filled with humiliated tears and he bent his head. 

“I’m sorry Asha… Robb… He’s gone…” A strangled sob escaped him. 

Asha pulled him down onto the pillows and pulled the furs up around them as he continued to mumble his apologies- for keeping her up, for being so much trouble… Asha hated this part the most of all but she stroked his hair softly and held him until he began to drift back to sleep. She thought he was sleeping when he murmured brokenly the constant refrain, **_“I should have died with him. Where was I? I should have been with him.”_**

Asha felt angry tears forming in her eyes as she whispered fiercely into the darkness,

“No. You shouldn’t have been with him. You should have never been with him. **You SHOULD have been with ME.”**  



End file.
